Your youth was a farm Where you met your manWho came on a horseAnd swept you off your feetAmidst dry fruits As you drew water from the well.Those days the water was sweetThere was something in itThat turned bitter with timeThat died in the violence.You hid with three other girlsIn a makeshift enclosureBelow the roofAs hell broke loose;For four months you were thereNot knowing who will liveAnd who will dieIt must be the worst kind of anticipationAnd then you were running on the bridgeWith family and friendsSome got butchered midwaySome reached the other sideSome jumped in the river and drownedSome swam across and lived.You reached the other side,And so we are in the world todayFinding our semblance in your faceEven though it is wrinkledCupping both palms over your earsSo you can hear usListening to your storyThat never grows old as you doLoving you moreSo we can love you enough

*Note: This poem is dedicated to my Grandmother (Chaiji) who survived the partition of India in 1947.

​Author Bio:I hail from the valley of Rishikesh, nestled in the Himalayas in India. Though my love for poetry began with Shakespeare, my city has inspired my creativity. I started writing poems in my engineering college – on the ever-so-dear theme of “unrequited love.” When I started working, I experienced various emotional ups and downs through quest for love, opportunities to travel, meeting new people in new countries, finding my passion, trying to better understand life, working with children, learning a new language and learning to dance. In this period, I wrote poetry extensively. Better yet, I realized that poetry was my way of connecting with people. It was the part of me that came closest to that elusive “purpose” all of us seem to want to find. It was effortless, it was beautiful, it was liberating, and most importantly- it touched people’s lives. For me, the most fulfilling thing about poetry is the sense of belonging it inspires when people discover that someone out there feels the same things they do.

I have written about a hundred English poems so far and I am looking for publishers for my collection. The themes are as general as love, God, destiny, my travels in India and the US, nature, dance, passion, and as specific as the Delhi gang-rape, a teenage mother, a Turkish cab driver, female infanticide, child labor. It is my sincere hope that my poems make you smile, cry, ponder, wonder, feel, and in that way, touch your life too.